The SA Sevens team will be arriving on the 8th/9th in India; They will be competing in the Sevens tournament in the “CWG” and have a fairly good squad to fight for the Gold. Lets have a closer look at the squad.

The squad has been in doubt for a while due to many injury concerns, but after all those issues here is the final squad for the “CWG”.

In the forwards we have a pretty young group,but seriously talented players. Many of you will be familiar with Mtembu from Sharks u21 side. Has good step, pace and strength. He is not huge, but just the right size to play the forwards role in the Sevens side. Boom Prinsloo is from Cheetahs u21 and also represented “Kovsies” in the Varsity Cup. Plays the ball carrying role in 15′s and will cause problems for opposing teams with his strong runs. He has good weight (105 kg) and pace for the sevens game. Really looking forward to see him in action. Some of you might have seen a bit of Okkie Kruger (around 102kg) when the Bulls played Province this past weekend. Built alot like Heinrich Brussouw and has good pace, strength and work rate. Chase Minnaar has represented Maties in the varsity cup. Has been involved in the squad for the last year or so. He has good strength and works really hard come ruck time and on defence, but lacks a bit of pace, but still a solid player. Marius Schoeman is a real “Ballie”. He really only offers experience. He is a decent player, but age has stolen some of the pace he used to posses.

In the backs at half back we have Paul Delport (C) and Renfred Dazel. Paul has a really good, strong pass. He also has really good pace off the mark and he is also well conditioned and therefore performs well on defence too. Dazel is a real play maker, with a very good step and for the 10th time very good pace. He can also cover Flyhalf and will most likely be used off the bench to cover both half back positions.

At Flyhalf we have Cecil Afrika. Vey good step, vision and also again very good pace. He shows alot of determination of defence, but his size still causes him to slip off some tackles.

Centre/Wing we have Ryno Benjamin and Mj Mentz. Ryno is very strong physically and competes well at the breakdown and is probably the best back at tackling. Mentz runs hard and makes his tackles, a real team player; but doesn’t have real full out pace and therfore he fails to finish off on some occasions. To explain i would give him a 8/10 for speed, we need a good 8.5 plus to burn the cover defence properly.

Wings we have Bernado Botha (can play centre if needed) and Sibusiso Sithole. Bernado has a strong running style in that he keeps driving in contact. Weighs around 91kg and has very good pace (8.5/10). Aplon would be around a 9.2 to help you all understand what i am on about. Sithole has played a few games for the u21 Sharkies. Has good strength,pace and has a decent step at times too.

My Personal starting 7:

Forwards- Boom Prinsloo,Okkie Kruger and Mthembu

Backs- Delport (C), Afrika, Benjamin and Botha.

Pace, Size, vision and Strength…what more do you want.

You can catch the Blitzbokke on Supersport on the 11-12 October. We play Tonga in the opening game of the tournamnet, then india and Wales. We will oviously top the group and be in the Cup Quarters on the 12th.

@Clayton(PJLD) (Comment 10) : prinsloo-105kg kruger-100kg, botha on the wing 91kg, chase minnaar- 95-100kg. these guys are lot bigger than other top sevens sides,plus ours all have really good pace, unlike some of the new zealand forwards.

Comment 11, posted at 05.10.10 15:49:09 by JJR

@Clayton(PJLD) (Comment 10) : Experience is a bit light, but remember New Zealand, Fiji have won many tournaments with young blokes making their debut’s. Talent is much more of a factor in 7′s than in 15′s for me; by that i mean mistakes in 7′s are alot less frequent than in 15′s due to a lack of experience. Stick even knocked on and ran away from support often last season.

And we all know where Ebersohn is!
Would have been great to see a guy like Elton Jantjies in the Sevens side!

Comment 17, posted at 05.10.10 20:08:05 by wpw

Don’t get me wrong JJR I will back these guys with as much fire as I do the 15s manne, I don’t know any other way.I just feel we are going into this tournament a bit green and haven’t gotten over losing Zanqwa.